Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily DeathMyers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)
Religion
Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death
Myers, F. W. H. (Frederic William Henry)
Immortality; Parapsychology; Personality
This we shall find in the fact that they are all of them
_message-bearing_ or _nunciative_ automatisms. I do not, of course, mean
that they all of them bring messages from sources external to the
automatist's own mind. In some cases they probably do this; but as a
rule the so-called messages seem more probably to originate within the
automatist's own personality. Why, then, it may be asked, do I call them
_messages_? We do not usually speak of a man as sending a message to
himself. The answer to this question involves, as we shall presently
see, the profoundest conception of these automatisms to which we can as
yet attain. They present themselves to us as messages communicated from
one stratum to another stratum of the same personality. Originating in
some deeper zone of a man's being, they float up into superficial
consciousness, as deeds, visions, words, ready-made and full-blown,
without any accompanying perception of the elaborative process which has
made them what they are.
Can we then (we may next ask) in any way predict the possible _range_ of
these motor automatisms? Have we any limit assignable _a priori_,
outside which it would be useless to look for any externalisation of an
impulse emanating from sub-conscious strata of our being?
The answer to this must be that no such limit can be with any confidence
suggested. We have not yet learnt with any distinctness even how far the
wave from a _consciously_-perceived stimulus will spread, or what
changes its motion will assume. Still less can we predict the
limitations which the resistance of the organism will impose on the
radiation of a stimulus originated within itself. We are learning to
consider the human organism as a practically infinite complex of
interacting vibrations; and each year adds many new facts to our
knowledge of the various transformations which these vibrations may
undergo, and of the unexpected artifices by which we may learn to
cognise some stimulus which is not directly felt.
A few concrete instances will make my meaning plainer. And my first
example shall be taken from those experiments in _muscle-reading_--less
correctly termed mind-reading--with which the readers of the
_Proceedings_ of the S.P.R. are already familiar. Let us suppose that I
am to hide a pin, and that some accomplished muscle-reader is to take my
hand and find the pin by noting my muscular indications.[162] I first
hide the pin in the hearth-rug; then I change my mind and hide it in the
bookshelf. I fix my mind on the bookshelf, but resolve to make no
guiding movement. The muscle-reader takes my hand, leads me first to the
rug, then to the bookshelf, and finds the pin. Now, what has happened in
this case? What movements have I made?
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